Haika was born in Bialystok, Poland, and became active in the Ha-Shomer
ha-Tsair Zionist movement. After the German occupation she became one of
the organizers of the Underground in Bialystok, and with five other young
Jewish women who posed as Poles, assisted resistance forces in Bialystok.

The general staff and executive committee of the ghetto resistance forces
at first decided that Haika Grossman should leave the ghetto while escape
was still a possibility. She categorically refused, and continued the fight.
The resistance in Bialystok were a minority, however. They did not have
the support of the masses of Jews, who chose to report for the fatal "evacuation"
transports. The resisters devised a last, desperate plan to break through
the ghetto fence, to facilitate escape by some of the more than 20,000
Jews who
had assembled for deportation. They distributed their one hundred
pieces of ammunition and assigned the machine gun to one fighter. A fire
that was deliberately set was the signal for fighting to begin. The resisters
fought until they died or ran out of ammunition. Haika and a few surviving
fighters escaped to the forests and continued the fight against the Nazis
as Partisans.

Haika Grossman described the heroism of the resistance fighters:

... our movement was large and strong and it was beautiful, even in
its defeat ... You must know how to live, and more than that, how to die.
We knew that by our death everything would not have ended, that our death
would become a symbol upon which a generation would be educated ...

And I want to tell you this, although it is difficult to bring such
words to my lips: the heroes of the people are not necessarily its recognized
political leaders. The true heroes of a nation are small people, silent,
unknown ...

With trembling lips I recall the memory of the daughters of Israel who
fell heroically on the battlefield - Lonka, Tosya, Frumka, and many others
like them - who will for evermore hold a glorious place in the annals of
our movement.

Silence was their most characteristic beauty. The daughters of Israel
who fell in battle excelled in that. They were the nerve centre of the
movement. Tosya and Lonka for the first time brought us tidings of Warsaw
and Vilna and news from our movement here, and you will never be able to
understand what this meant to us. We will never forget them and their images
shall be before our eyes as an eternal example for future generations.

After the war Haika Grossman immigrated to Israel, joining Kibbutz Evron,
and continuing to be politically alive. She is a representative of the
Mapam party in the Israeli Knesset.

(Editor's note in 2001. Haika
Grossman died a few years ago, in Israel.)